The blowing up of Kashmir

I am no Indologist. Am not an international relations expert.  I am not located in India.  Heck, I am not even an Indian!

Yet, sitting at home only a few hundred meters from the Willamette River, I knew immediately that tRump had committed a huge geopolitical blunder when he volunteered to mediate in the India-Pakistan conflict during a press conference with the visiting Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan.

After tweeting about, I followed up with this:

So ... why would #tRump commit such an enforced error, with enormous geopolitical implications between #India and #Pakistan over #Kashmir?
Here's why:@EdwardGLuce: https://t.co/SCKDRZvHdW

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) July 23, 2019

That was two weeks ao.

After a relaxing summer weekend, earlier in the morning, I read this:

The Indian government said on Monday that it was revoking a constitutional provision that had for decades given a unique degree of autonomy to Kashmir, a disputed mountainous region along the India-Pakistan border.

The government that won re-election by a huge margin by playing up the Kashmir and Pakistan cards takes the Kashmir issue to a whole new level right in time for its independence day political theatre!

The India-Pakistan tensions over Kashmir date all the way back to their respective creations from the British Raj, back in 1947:

Kashmir agreed to become part of India only under certain conditions that guaranteed its autonomy, which were protected by Article 370. India and Pakistan then fought several wars over the area and today most of Kashmir is administered by India, with a smaller slice controlled by Pakistan, which like Kashmir is majority Muslim.

Of course, the Pakistan government wasted no time in responding:

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry condemned the Indian announcement as a violation of United Nations resolutions, saying in a statement on Monday that “Pakistan will exercise all possible options to counter the illegal steps.”

Imran Khan started calling up his allies.

When speaking to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Khan said that "India's illegal actions to modify the special status of the Indian Occupied Kashmir would have serious implications for the regional peace and security"

tRrump couldn't care.  He reaffirmed on August 2 that he was happy to intervene."  Of course, he always doubles down!

The Pakistani military, the ultimate arbiter of the country's foreign policy (and its nuclear arsenal), didn't mince words: "Kashmir runs in blood of every Pakistani. Indigenous freedom struggle of Kashmiris shall succeed [God willing]," said Major General Asif Ghafoor, a military spokesman.

What next?

With a caveat that I am no expert, I worry about the following two possibilities:

• There will be tremendous pressure on Imran Khan to not merely fight back with words but also with weapons.  This is an attempt by the mOdi government to lure Pakistan into lobbing the first bomb across the border, which will then give the justification for the Indian government to launch a full-fledged military attack.
• Either with the support of Pakistan's notorious ISI, or on their own, militants will strike in India, especially timing with the independence day political celebrations.  These militant strikes will the justification for the mOdi government to clamp down on internal security--perhaps even an "emergency"--while launching a military assault on Pakistan.

Peace is doomed in the Subcontinent!